Daybreak in the Swamps

[joshbakr]

Sweet! Can't wait to see it.

[Oshyan]

I thought the water was fairly suitable, swamp-ish water. Maybe a bit too rough, but I don't think totally still water would be best either. Maybe somewhere in-between? Or perhaps do some crop render tests to see what is better.

- Oshyan

[monks]

Great render Nikita!

monks

[red_planet]

 

[nikita]

Lesson learned: Don't try to suit everyone 
I guess it's a matter of taste and depends on what you expect to see too. I imagined the water as quite thick and of muddy consistence so the way it looks now looks right to me.
A still water surface on the other hand often looks really nice too.

I'll let the quad core finish the new version and then maybe start a third version with half-calm water depending on how the crop that I'm just rendering turns out.

[fmtoffolo]

i havent posted in a long time. but this is the best tg2 render ive seen so far
just amazing

[RedSquare]

Agree with everyones comments regarding this render.  Stunning use of TG3, just think what could be done by the talent on here, with a TG that is more sympathetic to objects. 

[Seth]

you're right about not listening everyone it's just that i thought that in a swamp, the water will be still and not wavy but i don't live near swamps so i may be wrong...

[joshbakr]

The reason I suggested calm water is that it looks rather protected from wind with all the trees and when I think of swamps I think of a calm secluded place. It's your creation so do as you want. What do I know?  Don't listen to me, Oshyan's the expert here. 

[dandelO]

Someone grab my jaw for me, it's dragging along the ground and I'm taking in swamp water! 

Absolutely beautiful!

[nikita]

Thanks to all who've commented so far.

@josh.. No, you're right.. it shouldn't look like the water was moving.
It boils down to one simple problem: I wanted a bog but designed a swamp.
That's the reason why the displacement (those aren't waves) looks like waves.

The water in the previous version was quite calm but I tried to optimize the image, removed some shaders and after 62 hours it turned out the displacement looked like waves. This wasn't intended but the motivation to do any further work is quite small when you have to wait three days for the render to complete. 
Unfortunately, just removing displacement really made things worse.. now it looks like a mirror.

[NWsenior07]

It mesmerizing. You've included so much detail that my eye travels over it again and again and doesn't get bored. Very well done.

[otakar]

Das ist der Hammer!

The large version is a must-see. Shows you nicely that scenes like this need to be rendered large or a lot of the work is lost. It's bloody amazing. I think you are right in that the population count makes a big difference in terms of variety - which is natural. In nature, every organism is unique and with just a handful of populations that is hard to fake. This comes really close.

As for the water, it looks to me as if it is moving, I am picturing a river, a slow moving one, spilling over its banks. So for me, it works. And I think I'd leave it as is, the trees all look fine, and I actually love that tree on the left with its shiny bark

I hope this makes image of the week!

[rcallicotte]

I agree with Otakar.  This look sensational as is and is worthy of image of the week.

[nikita]

Ok.. here are two more versions with different water. (The files are 500kB each)
The first one has displacement disabled.. that's the mirror I mentioned earlier:

http://nkdev.de/nkblog/bilder/galerien/tg/alpharender04-100.jpg

The second is the mirror version put on top of the normal one with 50% transparency. That work's quite well in my opinion:

http://nkdev.de/nkblog/bilder/galerien/tg/alpharender04-50.jpg

I guess there's a version for anybody now